Russia surrender?

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: wargameplayer
Anyway --That’s why I said—hey just look around at some other WWII games because they pretty much all have some kind of peace or exit rule for every major power. It’s not a really super controversial concept as it is to the moderators here...

I don't know that it is all that controversial, I just think that people have different preferences, particularly on AV versus slugfest to the death. And 2by3 has made their decisions long ago, which is fine.

2by3 will never actually incorporate such rules, the most that would happen is that something be supported for modders to implement.

BTW - it could be that slugfest to the death can never be modelled all that well in WAW. Think what it takes for approximate realism in a 10 year war. Population limits, economic issues, local politics, intra-Alliance politics could be very hard/impossible to model accurately enough to even feel real. In slugfest mode one player can conquer the entire world in the game, but that in itself is clearly unreasonable. Look how hard it is to get a national commitment just to stay in Iraq (USA). Or Vietnam (France, USA). Or Afganistan (USSR, USA). Or Algeria (France).

There are occupation costs that are simply not modelled in WAW.

[wargameplayer]

When I used HOI as an example I was using it in the sense of a relatively recent version of the game (within a few years). Surrender options for the major powers are in the current version of the game. Including Russia.

As for WIF which you seem to have down cold...

The rule I quoted in my post was 13.7.6. It applies to every country --there is no Russia exception or exception for any major power.

13.7.6 Surrender

During any peace step, you can surrender a home country of a major power that controls less than half the printed factory stacks in the home country. You can surrender a home country with no printed factories if there is an enemy land unit there.
Treat the surrender of a home country as a complete conquest (see 13.7.1) of the major power if it doesn’t control any aligned minors. Otherwise it is incompletely conquered.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

Its funny you should mention WiF (the boardgame by Australian Design Group). While I never played HoI I most certainly did play WiF - probably in excess of 1000 hours across several versions.

In terms of Russia there is no special surrender rule in WiF - only a generic one that requires that you control every single (printed) factory in Russia - including a couple in the Urals and Vlad. So in terms of AWD thats basically the same as controlling every single area in Russia. As such WiF most certainly does not provide an example of what you are asking for - not with respect to Russia atleast. Personally I dont recall ever seeing Russia surrender in WiF though the player may have done so in a game where it could eventually have happened.

Concerning HoI it sounds to me like what I and others have heard could be from the stock version which has later been patched and you are referring to the patched game where those issues have been fixed. In that case we may both be right.

Its not that I find the issue in any way controversial - I just disagree with you that it would improve AWD in a meaningful manner.

[JanSorensen]

The rule you have highlighted concerns itself with volountarily surrendering though - as opposed to forced surrender = conquest. I highly doubt you intend for AWD to include volountarily surrendering so I fail to understand why you refer to that concept. The WiF rule you should be looking at is the one about conquest.
 
 

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
The rule you have highlighted concerns itself with volountarily surrendering though - as opposed to forced surrender = conquest. I highly doubt you intend for AWD to include volountarily surrendering so I fail to understand why you refer to that concept. The WiF rule you should be looking at is the one about conquest.

In the context of the WiF game, why would you voluntarily surrender a nation? Does it provide some benefit your side?

[GKar]

Come on guys, I think it's safe to say that there won't be such a change in AWD. Hence it seems pointless to keep arguing about it or how other games model surrendering or not. [:'(]

[wargameplayer]

There are surrender rules and conquest rules at 50% and 100% of all factories. It applies to all major countries. There is also an optional rule 50 where Russia/Japan are concerned that can come into play. And probably a lot of other special/optional rules I don't know about that come into play. Here is the rule 50 just as an example that-there are lots of creative rules than can add to game play and still be true to the period.

Option 50: (USSR-Japan compulsory peace) If Japan controls Vladivostok during the first war between Japan and the USSR, the Japanese player must agree to a peace if the Soviet player wants one. Similarly, if the USSR controls 3 or more resources that were Japanese controlled at the start of Sep/Oct 1939, the Soviet player must agree to a peace if the Japanese player wants one.
In either case, the new Russo-Japanese border is established by the hexes each controls. Any pocket of non-coastal hexes wholly surrounded by hexes controlled by the other major power becomes controlled by the major power whose hexes surround them

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
The rule you have highlighted concerns itself with volountarily surrendering though - as opposed to forced surrender = conquest. I highly doubt you intend for AWD to include volountarily surrendering so I fail to understand why you refer to that concept. The WiF rule you should be looking at is the one about conquest.

In the context of the WiF game, why would you voluntarily surrender a nation? Does it provide some benefit your side?

[wargameplayer]

You may be right. It’s been an interesting exchange though. Especially the people who play with AV on and say allies will never surrender. When that’s essentially what the AV abstraction is.

It’s an allied surrender on far worse terms than if you were to implement some of the ideas you were talking about incorporating that I thought were really good.

Many people who played Axis wanted something more of a challenge because in most cases reaching that AV point doesn’t represent total allied defeat –in game or historical terms. If it’s 1944 and the US multiplier just hit, and the Axis side just hit an AV—sorry but in too many cases the game has a way to go to reach a decisive conclusion.

God forbid we add some other possible outcomes that add to replayability or change the game in any way that might make add a level of interest or strategy to it.

Games now generate a lot of users/fans by having an active mod community and getting people excited and engaged. HOI for example has more game play out of mods and user designed content than it does I think original code. People shouldn’t be so scared of that. Bad mods don’t get played and good ones drive the game forward (and sales).

I was going to play in the tournament but I am seriously reconsidering that now if the game isn’t going to grow or change. The last 10 or so games of AWD I have played have gotten really stagnant and all unfold essentially the same way. It is starting to become clear from 1-2 of the posters who I think have a large say in where the game goes (or doesn’t go) that the potential for new ideas or even discussion of them is going to be confined and or restricted.

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: wargameplayer
Anyway --That’s why I said—hey just look around at some other WWII games because they pretty much all have some kind of peace or exit rule for every major power. It’s not a really super controversial concept as it is to the moderators here...

I don't know that it is all that controversial, I just think that people have different preferences, particularly on AV versus slugfest to the death. And 2by3 has made their decisions long ago, which is fine.

2by3 will never actually incorporate such rules, the most that would happen is that something be supported for modders to implement.

BTW - it could be that slugfest to the death can never be modelled all that well in WAW. Think what it takes for approximate realism in a 10 year war. Population limits, economic issues, local politics, intra-Alliance politics could be very hard/impossible to model accurately enough to even feel real. In slugfest mode one player can conquer the entire world in the game, but that in itself is clearly unreasonable. Look how hard it is to get a national commitment just to stay in Iraq (USA). Or Vietnam (France, USA). Or Afganistan (USSR, USA). Or Algeria (France).

There are occupation costs that are simply not modelled in WAW.

[wargameplayer]

I didn't realize that until now. I saw the posts by wandering head asking for potential new rules so I thought there was hope.

ORIGINAL: GKar

Come on guys, I think it's safe to say that there won't be such a change in AWD. Hence it seems pointless to keep arguing about it or how other games model surrendering or not. [:'(]

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: wargameplayer

I was going to play in the tournament but I am seriously reconsidering that now if the game isn’t going to grow or change. The last 10 or so games of AWD I have played have gotten really stagnant and all unfold essentially the same way. It is starting to become clear from 1-2 of the posters who I think have a large say in where the game goes (or doesn’t go) that the potential for new ideas or even discussion of them is going to be confined and or restricted.

Don't be too negative about it. I'm confident that the game will change when it's necessary because of gameplay or balance problems. Taking AV as the only surrender rule for the Allies is a game design decision though and thus very unlikely to change. Maybe it'll be possible to mod surrender rules at some point.

In fact I'd look forward to see some more mods. The Uncommon Valor scenario basically is an official or semi-official mod, and then there's WanderingHead's Global Glory. Maybe someone will start a project for a scenario without AV where both sides have roughly the same chance of winning, this could be interesting.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: wargameplayer
I didn't realize that until now. I saw the posts by wandering head asking for potential new rules so I thought there was hope.

There is hope (but no certainty) for mods only, if such changes are what you are hoping for.

I am actively working on adding support for such things, but with a job, wife and kids it may take a while. Even once completed, it will need to be verified bug free (to the extent possible), verified backward compatible (unchanged released rules) and Joel's approval for any release.

[Joel Billings]

Yes there is hope that either WH or Jan will make more of the game moddable over time so that there are more ways to play the game. I would enjoy seeing more scenarios for the game with different assumptions about how the war might have gone. I wouldn't totally rule surrender rules out of the official game or scenarios (they might show up someday as a game option), but they are more likely to be in a modder built scenario.

Are you seeing problems with the games following the same path in games vs. the AI or games vs. humans, or both? I find it much more of a problem in games vs the AI, for obvious reasons.

[Uncle_Joe]

If you are seeing identical game strategies in games with human players then perhaps it is a balance issue cropping up. And those can certainly be addressed in official patches.
 
I know I played over 20 games vs the SAME OPPONENT during the course of the beta and we rarely saw the game follow the same course twice. Sure, you see trends here and there (it is modeling WW2 afterall), but trying to use the same strategy over and over is a recipe for disaster (again, unless there is a balance problem).
 
What do you see that is always the same?

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
The rule you have highlighted concerns itself with volountarily surrendering though - as opposed to forced surrender = conquest. I highly doubt you intend for AWD to include volountarily surrendering so I fail to understand why you refer to that concept. The WiF rule you should be looking at is the one about conquest.

In the context of the WiF game, why would you voluntarily surrender a nation? Does it provide some benefit your side?

That mostly has to do with WiF being a hex game. If the enemy took most of the nation but left a string of hexes as a buffer say in Russia to make it harder for US troops to intervene you could surrender. Then all the hexes would turn Axis making an attack easier.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
The rule you have highlighted concerns itself with volountarily surrendering though - as opposed to forced surrender = conquest. I highly doubt you intend for AWD to include volountarily surrendering so I fail to understand why you refer to that concept. The WiF rule you should be looking at is the one about conquest.

In the context of the WiF game, why would you voluntarily surrender a nation? Does it provide some benefit your side?

That mostly has to do with WiF being a hex game. If the enemy took most of the nation but left a string of hexes as a buffer say in Russia to make it harder for US troops to intervene you could surrender. Then all the hexes would turn Axis making an attack easier.

Well, that actually seems like something that might be useful in AWD. Some kind of mechanism to surrender territories to the enemy so that they don't block your friends.